Biography

Director, Stanford Constitutional Law Center; Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution

Michael W. McConnell is the Richard & Frances Mallery Professor and Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, as well as Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is a leading authority on freedom of speech and religion, the relation of individual rights to government structure, originalism, and various other aspects of constitutional history and constitutional law. He is author of numerous articles and co-author of two casebooks: THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES (Foundation Press) and RELIGION AND THE CONSTITUTION (Aspen). He is co-editor of CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVES ON LEGAL THOUGHT (Yale Univ. Press). Since 1996, he has been a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Professor McConnell brings wide practical experience to bear on his teaching and scholarship. Before joining Stanford in 2009, he served as a Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He has argued thirteen cases in the United States Supreme Court, most recently CompuCredit v Greenwood, in 2011. Before his appointment to the bench, McConnell was Presidential Professor of Law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah, and prior to that the William B. Graham Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. He has taught six times as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. McConnell was Assistant General Counsel at the Office of Management and Budget, and Assistant to the Solicitor General in the Department of Justice, under President Ronald Reagan, and a member of the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board from 1988-1990. He served as law clerk to then Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and to Justice William J. Brennan Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court. He is a graduate of Michigan State University (1976) and the University of Chicago Law School (1979). He is of counsel to the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis.

In the News

• Second Opinions -- Obamacare Isn't The Only Target Of Conservative Judges
  The New Republic, May 24, 2012
• The Guesswork Begins: Who Would Romney Appoint To The Supreme Court?
  ABA Journal, April 23, 2012
• Obama Shifts View Of Executive Power
  The Wall Street Journal, March 30, 2012
• Here's A Funny Idea: Medicare Laws That Are Easy To Read Judges Lash Out At 'Tortuous Text,' Prepare For New Revisions
  The Wall Street Journal, March 09, 2012
• Relishing The Culture Wars
  The Economist - Lexington's Notebook, February 09, 2012

Courses & Programs

Courses

• Creation of the Constitution
• Religion and the First Amendment
• Tocqueville's Democracy in America

Programs

• Stanford Constitutional Law Center, Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law

Publications & Cases

Recent Publications View All

• Nathan S. Chapman, Michael W. McConnell, Due Process as Separation of Powers, 121 Yale Law Journal (forthcoming 2012).
• Michael W. McConnell, O’s Ugly ‘Warning’ - Bizarre Shot at Supreme Court, New York Post, April 4, 2012.
• Michael W. McConnell, What Would Hamilton Do?, 35 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 259 (2012).
• Michael W. McConnell, Schism, Plague, and Last Rites in the French Quarter: The Strange Story Behind the Supreme Court's First Free Exercise Case, in First Amendment Stories, Richard W. Garnett, Andrew Koppelman, editors, New York: Foundation Press, 2012.
• Michael McConnell, The OLC Opinion on Recess Appointments, Advancing a Free Society, January 12, 2012.
• Michael McConnell, Democrats and Executive Overreach, Wall Street Journal, January 10, 2012, p. A13.
• Michael W. McConnell, Falling Short of Our Ideals, Room for Debate: A Running Commentary on the News, New York Times, December 22, 2011.
• Michael W. McConnell, Is Religion Special?, Deseret Morning News, November 20, 2011.
• Michael W. McConnell, Washington Wants a Say Over Your Minister , Wall Street Journal, October 5, 2011, p. A15.
• Michael W. McConnell, A Free Speech Year at the Court, First Things, October 2011.